Langaville residents inconvenienced by open power box

Langaville – The community of Langaville Extension Two is concerned about an open power box that has been left like that for more than three weeks.

Concerned resident Thamsanqa Monaheng says the problem started when residents started complaining about the power tripping multiple times a day.

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“The reason why the power box was opened is that the load was too heavy for the circuit breakers to handle, so they came to put in a bigger one.

“The problem is that the circuit breaker is still too small which results in the power continuing to trip constantly,” he says.

Monaheng and another community member Bongani Hleza are concerned about the danger this open power box presents to the community.

“There are children in the area who might want to touch the wires out of curiosity which may result in electrocution,” says Hleza.

“What’s worse is that some of the wires themselves are starting to burn which also presents a danger to the people around it,” Monaheng adds.

He explains that when the power trips, a community member has to manually go to the box to push up the switch to restore power.

“This is dangerous for us as well because anything could happen while pushing up the switch,” he explains.

According to Monaheng another problem that comes with the power box is that the constant tripping damages the appliances.

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“There are people in the community whose television sets have been damaged as a result of that,” he says.

Monaheng says he has reported the matter to the municipality multiple times and was told they would have to wait for the new financial year as there is no stock of the circuit breaker needed to solve the problem.

The metro failed to respond to a media inquiry by the time of going to print.